WASHINGTON (AP) - With higher taxes on the wealthy and billions in new spending, President Barack Obama's no-balance budget lays down an audacious challenge to Republicans who swept to full control of Congress last fall and now claim a mandate to eliminate deficits over the next decade.

ATLANTA (AP) - Messages of support were being offered Monday as people awaited word on singer Whitney Houston's daughter, who authorities say was found face down and unresponsive in a bathtub over the weekend in a suburban Atlanta townhome.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Troubled by consumer complaints and loopholes in state laws, federal regulators are putting together the first rules on payday loans aimed at helping cash-strapped borrowers avoid falling into a cycle of high-rate debt.

NEW YORK (AP) - Rod McKuen, the husky-voiced "King of Kitsch" whose avalanche of music, verse and spoken-word recordings in the 1960s and '70s overwhelmed critical mockery and made him an Oscar-nominated songwriter and one of the best-selling poets in history, has died. He was 81.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - Authorities believe a woman left at an Alabama hospital three years ago with no identity is a Georgia resident who was dumped by a caretaker who then stole her government benefit checks.

BOSTON (AP) - James "Whitey" Bulger, the feared Boston mob boss who became one of the nation's most-wanted fugitives, was convicted Monday in a string of 11 killings and other gangland crimes, many of them committed while he was said to be an FBI informant.

CLERMONT, Fla. (AP) - As glass broke, the ground shook and lights went out, vacationers evacuated a central Florida resort building before a sinkhole caused a section of the villa to partially collapse early Monday.

TORONTO (AP) - The manager of a Canadian zoo says officials are preparing to remove more than a dozen animals from an exotic pet store beneath the apartment where two boys were asphyxiated by a python while they slept.